4 Similarly Herodotus on those who fell at Thermopylae: “Here as they fought, those who still had them, with daggers, the rest with hands and teeth, the barbarians buried them under their javelins.”[5] That they fought with the teeth against heavy-armed assailants, and that they were buried with javelins, are perhaps hard sayings, but not incredible, for the reasons already explained. We can see that these circumstances have not been dragged in to produce a hyperbole, but that the hyperbole has grown naturally out of the circumstances.
5 For, as I am never tired of explaining, in actions and passions verging on frenzy there lies a kind of remission and palliation of any licence of language. Hence some comic extravagances, however improbable, gain credence by their humour, such as--
“He had a farm, a little farm, where space severely pinches; ’Twas smaller than the last despatch from Sparta by some inches.”
6 For mirth is one of the passions, having its seat in pleasure. And hyperboles may be employed either to increase or to lessen--since exaggeration is common to both uses. Thus in extenuating an opponent’s argument we try to make it seem smaller than it is.
We have still left, my dear sir, the fifth of those sources which we set down at the outset as contributing to sublimity, that which consists in the mere arrangement of words in a certain order. Having already published two books dealing fully with this subject--so far at least as our investigations had carried us--it will be sufficient for the purpose of our present inquiry to add that harmony is an instrument which has a natural power, not only to win and to delight, but also in a remarkable degree to exalt the soul and sway the heart of man.
2 When we see that a flute kindles certain emotions in its hearers, rendering them almost beside themselves and full of an orgiastic frenzy, and that by starting some kind of rhythmical beat it compels him who listens to move in time and assimilate his gestures to the tune, even though he has no taste whatever for music; when we know that the sounds of a harp, which in themselves have no meaning, by the change of key, by the mutual relation of the notes, and their arrangement in symphony, often lay a wonderful spell on an audience--